Part I in Series: A Junior Associate's Networking Plan

7 Truths that Every Working Woman Should Know Before Having a Child -- Part VII

Finally, the 7th and final installation of the series that I started many months ago and haven't been able to bring myself to finish.  Way back in November, I promised to tell you the truth about the seven things that I wished I would have known about being a mom -- information that I thought would be helpful to professional women that are not yet moms but are contemplating starting a family.

I hope that my series was information and helpful, even if it was personal and only one girl's opinion and advice.  (I've put links to the other six posts below.)

The thing that I promised to write about last was: "You'll be the Same Person But Now You'll Just Have a Kid".  I've been putting this off because, well, the myth is self-explanatory.  However, with a lot of thought I think I have nailed the reason why this is a myth -- besides the obvious reaons like how could you possibly be the same person if you are only getting sleep in 1.5 hour increments or painting you two-year old daughter's toe nails with peel-off polish instead of getting a pedicure of your own in your free 30 minutes on a Saturday afternoon!  The truth to counter this myth is that the center of your life changes when you have a child...

Getting back into work after taking some time with your kids

I recently attended a symposium on work-life balance where the keynote speaker was Deborah Epstein Henry.  She was there to talk about her FACTS program.  In a portion of her talk, Debbie mentioned some current initiatives at Big Firms aimed at helping with the work-life balance concerns of women.  Most that she mentioned, I was aware of already because of blogs like Ms. JD.  Most were programs seemingly aimed at making the unbearable billable hours requirements more bearable or aimed at creating reduced-hour alternatives for lawyers.  However, she also mentioned that some firms are putting into place initiatives aimed at bringing back their "regrettable losses" -- i.e. attorneys that leave the firm that the firm wishes would have stayed and that may be in a position to come back at some point in the future.  One such program is the "Sidebar" initiative at Skadden and, frankly, I am not sure how I missed it. (JDBlissblog.com covered it last month here.)  You can find some information on it on Skadden's Women's Initiatives page here even though I think the program is not just for women.  According to the site:

Through Sidebar, attorneys in good standing may decide to leave the firm for any number of personal reasons for up to three years (more than the six-month maximum permitted under a leave of absence), with the expectation that they will return to the firm at the end of that period consistent with the needs of the firm and their department. The firm expects and encourages Sidebar participants to remain connected, for example, by attending certain firm-sponsored events and gatherings and continuing legal education programs.

This is not intended to be a plug for Skadden but more of a head's up to other law firms.  I think this is genius.

Off Track in Academia

While I can't pretend to be in the know about the gender politics of legal academia, an interesting study was brought to my attention by the FeministLawProfs today.  The study, the largest of its kind, found that

"[Women academics] are deeply frustrated by a system that they believe undervalues their work and denies them opportunities for a balanced life. While the study found some overt discrimination in the form of harassment or explicitly sexist remarks, many of the concerns involved more subtle “deeply entrenched inequities."

Even as somebody who is not involved in academia, I have always been keenly aware of the higher percentage of women in the non-tenure track positions and in positions of service, such as assistant deanships and counselors.  I recently had a discussion with an aspiring professor who informed me that many women take non-tenure track positions just to get their foot in the door of academia later to find out that it is nearly impossible to jump from one track to the other.  This is very similar to the track of "staff attorney" which is a non-partnership track at many large firms.  There too, it is nearly impossible to jump the tracks. 

However, the similarities between the numbers for women in academia and law firms are striking.  Believe it or not, in a statement criticizing the study, the university at which the author of the study works said this about it the progress of women on its faculty:

Women account for 43 percent of assistant professors, 37 percent of associate professors, and 22 percent of full professors. Those figures are going up in science and technology fields too, [the school] noted, and women now are 37 percent of assistant professors, 31 percent of associate professors and 18 percent of full professors in those disciplines.

Boy, this "progress" looks very similar to law firm numbers where women are 47% of junior associates and 18% of partners.  Hmmmm.

Playing the Gender Card

An advertising campaign by an all-woman law firm was brought to my attention by AboveTheLaw today.  The firm is Schroder Joseph and Associates, a boutique labor and employment law firm, and the ad campaign plays squarely on gender stereotypes with taglines such as "Ever Argue with a Woman?" and "Labor Pains? Talk to us.  We're women... we get it."  The controversy is also covered here and here.

I have to admit, that I agree with some of the commentors to the ABA Journal article, the ads are funny, catchy, memorable and remarkable.  Therefore, I would say they are effective advertising. However, what are they effective at and what sort of message does the reciever of the advertising message leave with?  I'm left with the following ideas and impressions -- SJA is an all woman firm (neutral); they aren't embarrassed about that (positive); they think that this is an advantage worth advertising (negative).  My response to the idea that the firm sees this as something worth advertising is negative because I am not sure that it is an advantage.  I can't be somebody that thinks that gender diversity is good for law firms and, at the same time, think that an all-woman firm is better than others, can I?  I recognize the strengths of men and the benefits of diversity.   I would hire an all woman firm to represent my company but I don't think that I would hire such a firm BECAUSE they were all women and I don't think we as women should be encouraging that either.

I get that the ads are supposed to be funny.  I also get that the ads are intended to play on gender stereotypes.  Does a profit-making business take out ads just to "be funny"? Nope, not unless they intend for that humor to attract business.  I just don't see any other explanation for it.

What do others think?

No formal vacation means, well, no formal vacation

Recently, as I was contemplating taking a couple of days off work when the school year ends for my kids in June and I got to remembering when I first started as a biglaw associate. In a session on one of the first days, we met with junior associates who were supposed to answer all of our questions that we didn't want to ask in more formal sessions. Quickly the question came up about how to ask for vacation days and I remember the others that I was starting with being almost giddy about the fact that there wasn't any formal approval process and that we didn't need permission to take time off and even that it didn't seem like anyone was keeping track of it. I also remember being a little relieved that it didn't seem like vacation had to be something that one planned far in advance and didn't need to be coordinated with the entire office. Afterall, it seemed nice that you could take vacation whenever your work scheduled allowed. Ha!-- what a misnomer that whole idea is. See, the schedule of a junior associate in a national law firm, will never allow vacation. Instead, one has to force vacation into a riduculously busy work load and take it regardless of whether you have time to take it or not -- or not take it at all, an option that many see to go for.

Also, I have come to learn that the fact that vacation is very informal for attorneys means, exactly that -- it is informal. The truth is that vacation in general is a very loose concept. I've tried to take a grand total of 4 vacation days since the beginning of this calendar year and have actually only been able to take 1 vacation day where I didn't work, although I was not in the office for the other three.

I was reminded of this today when reading a post on The Glass Hammer.

Loving what you are doing

I stumbled across a great little article about successful women attorneys today, here.  (Okay, so I am a few weeks behind on my reading!).  This article in New York Magazine is, for once, all about successful women lawyers and talks to many to find out their secret to success.  It is refreshing to find an article that, while starts with an introduction that sounds much like the Ms. JD Mission Statement, is really not so much about why women leave the profession but, instead, what makes the successful ones stay. 

What is their advice to young lawyers and other women executives? In a nutshell, you have to be prepared to work very hard for very long hours, they say. And, unless you really love the work, it won’t be worth that very high cost.

So true.

Work-Life Balance, not just a plea from us Ms. JD bloggers

One of my favorite blogs, The Juggle, has a post today about young doctors that are looking for some work-life balance and steering clear of jobs where they would be expected to be on call at all times in the life.  At the end of the post, Sara writes:

Despite the downsides, this industry shift toward family-friendly solutions was probably hard to imagine just a few decades ago. Might there be a similar shift on the horizon in other industries, like consulting, i-banking, or big law?

Now, as I just said, The Juggle is one of my favorite blogs.  But, wake up and smell the movement already.  I am sure the readers of Ms. JD know that there is a real swell of exasperation with the lack of work-life balance for Big Law attorneys.  Women lawyers, are everyday choosing career paths with better work life balance.  What we need is better work-life balance on all paths.

A good comment on the post's comment string says:

“…and they say, ‘I’m not doing this, I’m not doing that,’” which makes the older doctors realize they’ve been had. It’s not this generation’s fault that the older docs were duped into working long hours for little reward.  No, “We’re not doing it,” and we’ll get paid just fine working a job with reasonable hours, zero call, and family time.

Is being somebody's spouse a full time job?

The WSJ Online recently published this article that reports the findings of a recent study that women professionals are more likely than male professionals to be divorced, with women MBA's twice as likely as male MBAs. These findings of course raise all sorts of issues (including culture, societal pressures, work life balance, ambition) and we could go on and on about the differences between men and women in today's America.

While the article suggests that professional women are "opting out" of marriage and family in order to have careers, the point at the end of the article is interesting to me:

Ms. Hewlett believes more is at play than just a prevailing image that high-earning women are a threat to men. Suggesting that highly successful women are attracted to similarly successful men, she put forward the idea that such women "can't summon up the TLC and support that high-earning men need."

Her advice? Well-educated, highly compensated women should be targeting particularly loving and supportive men.

This begs the question, then, whether being a supportive spouse is a full time job. Afterall, as a professional woman, I don't have time for another full time job -- something's got to give and maybe for many women that something is their marriage.

However, to some how suggest that high earning men "need" full-time spouses to support them and that high-earning women do not is well, insulting to men and I don't think a factual concept at its core (society may tell men they need such a wife but that doesn't make it so). Her statement suggests that the men are leaving their high-earning wives because the women don't give them TLC. (The old "blame the woman for not being a 'good wife'" argument that society can't seem to lay to rest.) What if its the women that are doing the leaving because they just can't have two full-time jobs and to expect them to is ridiculous? Oh, and what if these women also need support and TLC from their spouses? One thing I will say is that it is my belief (not based on a scientific study but more anecdotal) that financially secure women are more likely than similarly secure men to think they can go it alone if faced with an unsupportive spouse-- hence the opting out of marriage makes sense. (This is the bottom line of the post on this topic at The Juggle and I agree.)

As for her advice, in the end... I too would argue that professional women need loving and supportive spouses. Perhaps the fact that more professional women are divorcing than their male counterparts and many more are staying away from marriage in the first place, suggests that (a) such "particularly loving and supportive men" are just not around or (b) that we just can't have two full time jobs.

Georgia Association of Women Lawyers Report on Flexible Work Schedules Released in March 2008

GAWL released its Report "Its About Time II: Examining Flexible Work Arrangements from the Attorney's and the Firm's Perspective; A Study of Part Time Policies in Georgia Law Firms" in March 2008. The study is very interesting and well done. Here are some of the most interesting findings, that frankly reinforce the idea that such policies could be great recruiting tools for firms everywhere:

• Greater than 93% of male and female respondents look favorably on employers that allow part-time or flexible work arrangements, even if they themselves do not plan to take advantage of such arrangements
• 86% of women attorneys are interested in using a part-time or flexible work arrangement in the near future
• Many women who left their firms cited difficulties in balancing the demands of work and personal/family life

Here are some of the more discouraging statistics which really aren't that surprising to me:

• Men and women alike believe working part-time or on flexible schedules is career limiting
• 30% of part-time attorneys report working more than the normative 40-hour full-time work week
• 90% of firms have never had an attorney achieve partner status while on a part-time work scheduleMore than half of the firms surveyed have never employed a part-time attorney

Check out the whole report for great information.